Blogtips

Blogtips zijn er in overvloede. Het is alleen lastig om de juiste online blogcursus, blogtutorial of blogworkshop te vinden. In dit gedeelte van dutchproblogger.nl presenteer ik de beste.

Ben je net begonnen met bloggen? Lees dan eerst de startgids

6 apr

Getting readers to comment by writing an unfinished blog post

All the bloggers immediately know what I’m talking about if I start complaining that readers don’t comment. A famous study by Jakob Nielsen in October 2006 showed that only one percent of a blog’s visitors contribute to the comments section on a regular basis:

In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.

So when you’ve faced this fact, there are a couple of things you can do:

ignore it
accept it and use it as self-justification for the lack of comments
find ways to get your readers to comment

To be honest with you, I’ve often thought: Oh well, that’s just how things go in the blogosphere. And when Internet expert Bas van den Beld told me to invite readers to comment in my Next Web blog posts, I gladly did by ending articles with a question. Also, I came up with an original way to tell people how many readers participated in ‘the conversation’ on this blog. And sure, my ‘recent comments’ widget is always placed as high as possible (also a tip from Bas).

Yet I feel like I never made a real effort to work on the level of interactivity on my blogs. I’m busy enough with writing four to five articles a day, so should I also save time to lure my visitors to the comment form?

The answer is yes, I should get my readers to comment. Guess you can’t call yourself a blogger if you don’t stimulate your visitors to take part in the discussions. It’s all about interactivity after all.

So I started talking with other bloggers about how they fight this bloggers battle. (meer…)

1 apr

Article of the Day: The world of blogging according to TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld

Everyday I highlight an article worth reading for bloggers and web-savvies, have look at the archive here

Six Months In, And 600 Posts Later . . . The Worlds Of Blogging and Journalism Collide (In My Brain)

Today’s article is written by Erick Schonfeld, co-editor of world’s largest tech blog TechCrunch. Erick has one impressive track record, since he has been covering startups and technology news for 14 years. He ran the main blog of Business 2.0 (50,000 RSS readers), won several prizes, made it to the TJFR Business News Reporter’s list of the “best and brightest financial journalists under the age of 30” twice and graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University in 1993.

He has been blogging for TechCrunch for six monhts now, and celebrated that fact with an insightful post about TechCrunch and his blogging experiences:

The journalist in me has been avoiding this post (too navel-gazing, too self-absorbed), but the blogger in me can’t help it. Media is changing—how it is produced and how it is consumed. The worlds of blogging and journalism are colliding and I want to get some thoughts down on this transition before I forget what the old world was like or feel too comfortable in the new one.

He then continues describing the growing influence of blogs, his 24/7 addiction to blogging, and the mantra of the TechCrunch crew: “We live or die by how fast we can post after a story breaks, if we can’t break it ourselves”. A must-read for every (tech)blogger.

Read the article on www.techcrunch.com

31 mrt

New category, Article of the Day: skills for journalists

I use Fleck, Google Reader, Twitter, and Delicious. So that basically means I’m sharing loads of articles everyday. Yet I have the feeling, no, I’m sure, that most of these links get lost in the overwhelming amount of social bookmarks and Twitter updates. And yes, that fine. Except when it comes to those posts that have a little something extra. Posts every blogger or web-savvy should read. From now on I’ll highlight these posts on a daily basis. Here we go, no. 1, tipped by Edial Dekker.

Ten Basic New Media Skills Journalists Need To Know

Tom Foremski, a former IT journalist and and Silicon Valley columnist for the Financial Times, blogs on the Silicon Valley Watcher about the business and culture of the Valley. Besides the post I’m highlighting here, his about page is also worth your attention.

Foremski sums up ten basic skills for journalists, because ‘most traditional journalists can barely type (..) but they know how to create compelling media and are able to do it consistently’. The striking thing about this list is that the skills are really basic for experienced bloggers. Yet we – the bloggers – tend to forget that. So next time we complain about the lack of journalists in the blogosphere, we might think about improving accessibility. What about a New Media Skills Volunteer Group?

Read the article on www.siliconvalleywatcher.com

Update: Tim Overdiek, correspondent in London for the NOS Dutch public broadcasting posted two interesting updates on Twitter in reply to this post:

overdiek @dutchproblogger Don’t fully agree w/him. I prefer a journalist who can’t type but can tell a good story. Let others help the poor bastard. (about 18 hours ago)

overdiek @dutchproblogger But of course I love the top ten. (Although confession: Can’t do them all.) (about 18 hours ago)

Overdiek is a blog evangelist and even convinced some famous Dutch news anchors to start blogging. I admire his work yet I don’t agree with him on this. Shouldn’t we redefine the definition of a journalist? Just like a chiropractor has to learn new techniques, journalists should as well.

Times are changing, people have less attention and ask for a different kind of reporting (with deeplinking and all), so journalists have to adapt to these new needs. What do you think?

25 mrt

Conference blogging made easy: a few tips

The last couple of months I’ve covered three conferences for The Next Web: Le Web 3 in Paris, LIFT08 in Geneva and Plugg in Brussels. Before that, I didn’t really supplied my readers with live coverage. So when I opened my macbook in Paris, I was pretty surprised by the energy and the attention conference blogging asks. You have to listen, write and think about what the speaker is saying at the same time. Moreover, people expect you to post soon pretty fast after the speaker has left the stage.

During Le Web 3, the whole act of live blogging was pretty overwhelming for me. After that, I started thinking how I could make conference blogging more easy. So I started working on a list of tips. Yet also during LIFT08 and Plugg I sometimes thought I was losing control. So I guess it really is a learning process, and this list is still just a start. I decided to publish it now, since The Next Web conference is on its way, so some preparation doesn’t hurt anybody.

Oh and by the way, I’ve left out the obvious ones like ‘charge all the batteries of your devices’. I assume you’ve thought about them already. If you have any advices to add, please drop them in the comments. (meer…)

17 mrt

Ask a Blogger Part 1: How do I get attention?

Last month I was reading Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World’s Top Bloggers by Micheal A. Banks. One of the thirty bloggers featured in this book is Dave Taylor. On Askdavetaylor.com he answers tech questions of his visitors. He inspired me to start a blog version of this concept. So, do send me your blog questions and I’ll give you my answer. You can reach me by sending a line to ejpfauth@gmail.com or @ejpfauth on Twitter.

How do I get attention for my blog?

Two weeks ago, Corné Kox asked me on Twitter how he could get some traffic to his blog. Of course there’s a lot to read on this subject. Australian problogger Darren Rowse has written a zillion posts about original, dirty, simple and beautiful ways of driving traffic to your site. So I gladly refer to his posts if you want to know the basics.

My personal advice is short and sweet: do something extraordinary (and nice). In a blogosphere where everybody does the same: “The 10 best …” or “How to…”, the perfect way to gain attention is to do something completely different. (meer…)

11 mrt

Let’s get you started with Web 2.0 news

On a daily bases, I have to at least explain twice what Web 2.0 is and what it means for us. Unfortunately too many people shrug their shoulders after my lyric and slightly persuasive story about this revolution. Sometimes however, a somewhat smarter person does get excited about the new developments. He or she wants to learn more! Debuzzing the buzzword Web 2.0! From now on, I can refer to this blog post, since I’ll list some blogs to get you and others started with keeping up to date on the Web 2.0 news. I’ve also included a link to all the RSS feeds.

First of all, this is a selection of the blogs I keep track of for The Next Web Blog. This blog is all about international start-ups, so not just news from Silicon Valley, and also discusses the personal side of being an Internet entrepreneur. Next to keeping you up to date, we strive to inspire you as well. So that’s tip no. 1! Let’s get started with other great Web 2.0 blogs. Here we go! (meer…)

29 feb

Oproep aan alle sprekers: visie gevraagd

Sinds ik werkzaam ben voor The Next Web Blog, struin ik nogal wat conferenties af. Naast veel teleurstellende sprekers, heb ik ook enkele zeer begaafde speakers gezien. Evan Williams van Twitter kwam op Le Web 3 in Parijs met een eye-opener: What can we take away, to create something new?. Hans Rosling werd tijdens diezelfde conferentie terecht een ‘genie’ genoemd door organisator Loic le Meur.

Ook op LIFT08 in Genève waren enkele begaafde sprekers, zo legde Genevieve Bell uit waarom mensen liegen op het web. Wat hadden deze presentaties gemeen? Juist, visie! (meer…)

28 feb

Stay fit and prevent RSI: play Bottle Soccer

Number 1 tip to stay fit and prevent RSI is to keep moving. You gotta just do more than just making a walk to the coffee machine. You have to use your muscles and start sweating a bit. Play ping-pong, fussball or.., make up your own game. That’s exactly what we did at the Meganova office.

When I was at Le Web 3 in Paris, I found a pink stress relief ball in my goodie bag. At first, I just used it for what it’s meant for: that means squeezing the ball to relief stress. Yet after a while, the guy whose sitting in front of me – Sander van der Vliet – started throwing the ball trough the office. That’s when the poor little pink ball received its first kick. It soon evolved into a real game: Bottle Soccer. It looks something like this:

Photos by Bram Kok

Yesterday I wrote a review about Checkser, a sort of Wikipedia-style checklist database. Guess what kind of checklist I made when I was testing the service?

27 feb

How to process blog-related email Getting Things Done-style

When we launched The Next Web on January 7 this year, we got TechCrunched right-a-way. That not only caused a lot of traffic, it also made my mailbox flood. I remember it seemed like every start-up mailed me a PR request that night. Still every day, I find an amount of new emails I would have never thought to receive on a daily basis. I had to find a way to deal with all these electronic letters, so I turned myself to David Allen‘s Getting Things Done.

He gives some good tips about handling email, some of which you can read on 43Folders. Yet when you’re a blogger, checking your mail is a slightly different story. So I started thinking about a good way to process my mail, and this is what I came up with. (meer…)

26 feb

Two Flickr plugins to be cool and artsy

On The Next Web, we try to give our articles a hip and stylish look by using Flickr pics instead of just another logo. Or as a visitor once said in the comments: “Tryin’ too hard to be cool and artsy”. Well, I think we’re doing pretty good job, you may judge for yourself.

Anyway, I’ve stumbled upon two handy plugins that make being ‘cool’ and ‘artsy’ with Flickr pics even easier. One for WordPress and one for iPhoto. (meer…)

25 feb

Drie redenen om een persoonlijke website te beginnen

Voor bedrijven is het vanzelfsprekend om een website te maken. Het is het ideale online visitekaartje en een goede manier om als onderneming informatie te publiceren zonder eventuele kritische aanmerkingen van een journalist. Kijk alleen al naar de grote hoeveelheid bedrijfsweblogs die als paddenstoelen uit de grond schieten. Dagelijks schrijven werknemers daar over de uitdagingen waar zij tijdens hun werk op stuitten.

Maar ook als particulier doe je er goed aan een website te beginnen. Waarom? In dit artikel geef ik je drie redenen: ‘Het merk IK’, ‘Google Gevaar’ en ‘Geen grenzen’.
(meer…)

2 feb

Netwerken Nieuwe Stijl (foto)

Natuurlijk, netwerktips vind je op het web genoeg (1, 2, 3, 4). Maar volgens mij kan je het beste het voorbeeld van internetondernemer Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten volgen en out-of-the-box denken. Dat is netwerken nieuwe stijl: schoenen poetsen bij een chique kleermakerij. Ik schreef onlangs al dat ik waarschijnlijk de verleiding van het laten schoenen poetsen niet kon weerstaan. Dat vermoeden bleek terecht te zijn. Maar naast glimmende schoenen, heb ik er ook een interessante ochtend aan over gehouden. Goede gesprekken met mede-ondernemers, champagne vlak na het ontbijt en een korte introductie in de luxe wereld van de kleermakerij. Het vergt wat lef en humor, maar dat nieuwe netwerken bevalt me wel. Mocht jij inspiratie hebben opgedaan voor een originele netwerkgelegenheid, laat het weten in de reacties. (meer…)